Three years ago this
month, the Governor and State Legislature enacted the historic legislation
that opened a new era of hope for our City's public schools. They granted
the City control of its school system. With that authority came accountability.
We accepted the challenge. We launched a comprehensive reform of the schools,
and set for ourselves the goal of "ensuring that every student acquires
the skills in reading, writing, and math that are the foundations of all learning."

Our reforms are working. Earlier
this spring, more than 275,000 students in the 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades
took standardized, independently graded tests in math, and more than 300,000
were tested in the "English Language Arts" skills of reading comprehension
and writing. Last week, we got the results. Our students achieved the highest
scores ever. They posted the biggest one-year gains in both math and ELA since
the City started administering these tests in 1999. And for the first time,
at least half of the students met or exceeded their grade-level standards
on both tests.

There were big gains in every grade.
The results from the 5th grade were especially impressive. Remember that at
the beginning of this school year, we said that we would end the "social
promotion" of 5th graders, just as we had abolished social promotion
for 3rd graders last year. We also took aggressive steps to identify and help
5th grade students who were at risk of being held back. The result: There
was a jump of nearly 20 percentage points in 5th graders meeting or exceeding
standards on the ELA test, and a better than 15-percentage-point increase
on the math test.

For too many years, there have
also been persistently wide gulfs in test scores among students of different
racial and ethnic groups. This has been one of the most shameful features
of public education in our city-and our Administration has been determined
to close this "achievement gap." So I am very pleased to say that
this year, Black and Hispanic students also recorded their greatest year-to-year
gains ever on both the ELA and math tests.

Students should feel proud of what
they've accomplished-and so should their parents. Our teachers also deserve
a lot of praise. They have put in the long hours - in their classrooms during
the day, and often enough, in their homes, grading homework and preparing
lesson plans at night and on the weekends. They have given the extra effort
to help our students realize their full potential-and their hard work is paying
off.

These test scores show that our
Administration's investments in classroom education, and our policy of holding
students, teachers, parents, and ourselves accountable for results, are making
a difference. We've still got a long way to go, but we're on the right track.
We've made more headway in improving student classroom performance than at
any time in the city's recent history. If we stay the course, then we can
look forward to a future bright with promise for our youngsters, and for our
city.